cloud and gullets filled with [inaudible]. cattle, chattel, channel of the deep blue. see all about that dark moon cloud and the gullets full of water and slaughter. assault, assault oh , channel of the deep blue sea. sure no one will see. just look out the world around you right here on the ocean floor. such wonderful things around you what more is you looking for. rag ed claws scuffling across the seas. tell be thin, fine, attention nigger mermaids, chains like hooks and sifrpgs are didy don't bleed into the sea the stains won't watch out we ain't responsible for your mess. the management.

there is company, can't remember. there is company. the stains will not wash out. [applause] >> he wasn't dragged death in a quick casual way. they had fun with his body they chained him to the back of the car did fish tails. forensic evidence suggests his body came lose and some of the men confessed and rechained him after rolling back over him to get him. most of us heard about this tragedy. something we don't hear is because dragged to death we assume he was dragged like this. see that way chained to the truck it's not true. he was not dragged like that he was dragged like this.

chained the back of the truck watching the road behind him. this poem is called big thicket jasper, texas. a crack is a buck shot. big thickel. crack, headlights staggering home. the road kills. crack, big thicket. the sticks, drink, drink, headlight stagger in the road. creek, crack, stick broke light kills. big thickel. buck shot by the white headlights to big thicket. what you looking at. crack, the white stick big thicket along the trees. the buck is staggering home. crack, we go to big thicket what you are doing here. break for home. on the road, go, go, crack, crack, crack, big thicket.

headlights what you think you are. huff, is this, critic o crack, a stick broke. buck in the brushes. put them back on. what you think. in the rushes. put them back o. big thicket we go to creek. go to head staggers along the trees. crack, a stick broke the creek breaks big thicket we go, buck shot, home we go, go, big thicket. road kill. staggering bucks. headlight rushes. screeching. road screeching, what you what you. we go, we go. crack. bones. road kills a broke stick along the staggering creek we go on. [applause] >> i will close with a poem from the book it's live evil.

a name of a miles davis album we know that miles davis abused his wife. physically. pearl initially had mad at miles the reason this poem exist system because of that esan and the epigraphs that will ground it some more. quote, miles was guilt of self confessed violet crimes against women we should break his records and burn his cd's until he apologizes. the trumpet's mouth is apology. you just write a poem about your need to do that a madual johnson. all right. live people. the pins point come downs on the butter fly. the knuckle come down on ms.

sisly. the mallet come down on the cd case. wait! the mallet come down on the butter fly. the pins point come down on the ms. sisly. the knuckle come down on the cd case. wait! >> the knuckle come down on the buttir fly. the pins point come down on the cd case. dammit. the butter fly, ms. sisly the cd case. the roses rips at the spit much the phoenix dazzling petals births something. the martir's smile that saves something. what did we make? listen to the butter fly, the pinpoint makes no sound sticking the [inaudible] no brass wail to the air here it's silent as a

necktie this is not right. ms. sisly a cd case and a pin striped suit did he stick her lips red. i don't know, i don't know. sometimes he wore a pin striped 3 piece and a dazzling tie. i have a mallet did he kiss her. lips red. did he stick her with a pins point much listen to the brass ware and butter fly the plastic and silence breaks. this is a man thinking he can build with a mallet. a martir with knuckles. this it is a man who through out the notes. wait. dammit, ms. sisly why won't you listen to the man who writes lynches. he had a mallet and the oils in the hands cripple the butter fly

won't fly again so butter wait. butter stay. butter still. what have we made that awakes. stay still. listen to the song of a man in his sleeping shell. it come down it come down. the pinpoint, the knuckle, the mallet. wait a bit. no birthing. no saving. no feeding. dammit! >> listen to the song of a man who makes what have we made? thank you. [applause]

. >> good evening and welcome to the san francisco public library. i'm joan jasper and i'm with the department of exhibitions and public programs at the library and i want to welcome you it our program tonight, our

incredible evening with playwright and author phillip congatongas. this program is in connection with an exhibit, two exhibits, that we have up on the 6th floor. the first one is called if they came for me today, the japanese american internment project, and also we have another exhibition called relocation and resiliency, the japanese american internment in california. and both of those are up on the 6th floor and this is the last week, so if you haven't a chance to see these exhibits yet, we really encourage you to go on up and see them because they will be closing on sunday. we really want to thank community works for bringing the exhibit if they came for me today to the san francisco public library. and here to tell you a little bit more about community works is ruth morgan, so help me

welcome ruth morgan. thank you. . >> thank you. i do hope that if you haven't seen the exhibit, you will go up to the skylight gallery and see it. the project actually involved over 225 young people who studied the japanese internment through the personal stories of 15 people who were interned or impacted by the internment. and the exhibition highlights the individual stories of each of the japanese americans who came into the classroom, as well as the rich student responses to these stories. the project really gave the students space to make very meaningful connections between the historical event of the japanese internment and contemporary and historical instances of social injustice in america today. but we're here today to meet phillip and chloe, so i want to

introduce you to them. phillip also was one of the gracious japanese americans who came into the classroom and told his story. phillip congatonda went to law school and graduated hastings law school but never actually practiced law. he became the first chronicler of the japanese american experience and is credited with broadening the japanese -- broadening the definition of theater by bringing jap needs american stories to stages all across the country. he has collaborated with the most diverse american theater venues, from large mainstream houses to the most experimental venues to african american ethnic cally specific theaters reaching extraordinarily diverse audiences. from here to japan, his acclaimed sisters, maximoto premiered in 2005. in the last couple years he

worked with camposanto on a fist of roses on male violence and an orchestral composition. many of his plays are collected in month more cherry blossoms published by washington press. among his awards are the civil liberties public education fund and lila wallace reader's digest award. phillip is also a respected independent film maker whose film recently premiered at sundance, but we're here to talk about his upcoming production, after the war. a jazz-infused drama set in

post-war san francisco japan town in 1948 which chronicles the return of japanese americans into the internment -- from the internment camp. sharing this evening is chloe veltman. chloe was born in london and received a master's degree with distinction in conjunction with harvard university and the moscow art theater school. she has worked as a staff reporter for the daily telegraph and is a freelance writer, her articles appearing on both sides of the atlantic. she is the chief theater critic for the san francisco weekly, theater commentator for klaw. chloe worked for several years in u.s. and uk theater

companies and is the recipient of the allen wright award for arts journalism, the sundance institute arts fellowship and the nea fellowship of journalism. in 2006, she received a best columnist nomination at the annual san francisco media excellence awards and her first book on acting was published by farber and farber in the uk and farber, inc., in the united states. let's welcome phillip and chloe >> hi there, phillip. >> hi, chloe >> so, this play, it's been quite a journey. we're talking 3 1/2 years, maybe nearly 50 different

drafts and 5 workshops? . >> five workshops, yes. >> so, looking back at the journey, how has it been for you and has it come out as you expected it would? . >> what's interesting is if you work on a play this long, normally there are times that it becomes redundant and you get a little bored with the piece. it's only natural. it's pushing 4 years now. this one was interesting in that it never got boring or ever felt redundant and each thing that we did over these almost 4 years, whether it was going off to sundance or to writer's retreat they have in sheritan, wyoming -- is that where you went? . >> that was in utah and la as well, down there at the institute. >> they have another writer's retreat in sheritan, wyoming, so i spent time out there and

we workshoped this in san francisco, we have done readings at the asia society in new york. each time we did a workshop, each time we did a reading, it moved the piece forward. i think in large part it has to do with working with cary pearloff, the director, but she is also an excellent dramator. she worked closely with me in terms of the writing of the material so as we went along, we were able to shape the piece as well as figure out how to stage it. it's an interesting piece in that i wrote it with a number of small themes and the choice is you either present it like a doll house, or rear view window where you have kind of a cut out and you kind of jump from one room to another, or -- and this was my preference -- to develop some kind of cinematic approach to allow for there to

be a fluidity in all these separate scenes. so cary and the scenic designic, donna eastman, as well as the lighting designer jim ingles developed this idea of a turn table which would turn and allow the audience to see primary locations but see beyond that through the set secondary and tertiary types of scenes as opposed to being very boxy. so in the writing of the piece, all of this is taken into consideration while it was being developed, how we were going to stage it. over that period of 3 1/2 to 4 years, the piece got tighter, stronger, we worked with a variety of actors that came and went which in this particular case was very important because

the material deals with people from a lot of different backgrounds and my own background is japanese american, there are two cake ters who are japanese american, three, rather, but there are african american characters, there's a russian jew by way of yokohama and i don't necessarily have those backgrounds. so in the workshop process, what it allows me to do to work with actors, particularly some of the african american characters, i can work with them to make sure the characters i am developing have a authentic, you know, authenticity to them and that they are from the inside out as opposed to sort of working from the outside in. so, for me, those kinds of things are critical so i spent a great deal of time making sure that the characters that were wrought that you will ultimately see on stage are truthful, are grounded in real

life. so over this period of 3 1/2 to 4 years it was time well spent and it continues to be developed even as we speak. i'm going to go home and do some more rewriting after this. so it's still being worked on. >> so let's talk a little bit about the inspiration for the play. i mean, i've seen from reading different things about you that your productions or your plays have been inspired by very diverse things. for example, there's a play you are developing right now for the asian american company which is based on the asian children's book the five chinese brothers, a play called four chinks and a dike. there's also the dream of kitsumura which was inspired by a dream you had about your

father. this play, way back, before it became this play was an adaptation of the 1954 play rashamon. how did you get from rashamon to this. >> the original idea was that i was going to do an adapt daition of rashamon. cary pearloff said you want to do a play for us, how about adapting rashamon. i said, sure. as is the case when i do this, sometimes i go in a straight line and sometimes i end up somewhere totally different. i've grown to accept it, that i'm going to follow the horse wherever it goes and hope that the theater is comfortable with it.

so it started off as rashamon and i couldn't find an entree into it. for me, when i do an adaptation, i try to frame it in present day life context or contextualize it in another moment and bring that skeletal story line structure into it. and i couldn't make any headway. then a story that had been kind of floating around in my head kind of came to the fore, and is as the case when i write, there will be story lines floating around in my head for years, years and years are floating around in my head waiting for a moment to find its moment. and this story that i had been working on off and on about this boarding house in san francisco post internment camps. as i worked on this rashamon story, this other one came alive and they began to meld

and they wrote themselves and became after the war. so when you see the play, you will see elements of rashamon in the play, but you will have to look very closely. and to cary pearloffs and scp's credit, they were very cool about it, which is the neat thing about working in theater as opposed to film. they said fine, let's go with this, let's run with it. once they were comfortable with it we continued to work on it for 3 1/2, 4 years now. >> so the play takes -- this play that you have now written, that has developed from that seed idea, takes its theme japanese internment camps and what happened to someone who had been in internment camps. >> uh-huh. >> this character had not only been sent there, the central character in the play, but also he had said he wasn't going to

fight in the war. perhaps you'd like to talk a little bit about the theme of the play, but also the theme of the internment camp is something you visited quite a bit in your writing, phillip. in matsumoto and also in the collaboration with ken suganoff but i know this is a theme you come back to time and time again. >> if you are japanese american, it's one of those things that is just a part of your body. that's there no matter where you look or how fast you run or if you embrace it, it's simply there. i was born post-war, post internment camps in the 50's. and though it wasn't something that was talked about a lot at the time i was growing up, it certainly was always there and as i grew older and i began to write and i began to write about stories of my family, i

began to realize that that particular historical moment, because it affected en masse the whole community, all of stockton the whole japanese american community was uprooted and eventually ended up in arkansas. if you live in a community that's been through that, there is a common thread that runs through the psyche, the behavior of that community whether you talk about it or not. that's the community i grew up in. as i grew older in the late 60's when this whole movement began to sort of remember the event where, quote, the younger sons went back to the neisei and said let's talk about this. i happened to be around that time and participated in that

particular critical movement when this whole concept of asian america came about where there was an acknowledgement that these kinds of stories are important, they haven't been told and we should tell them. so, for me, it's a time when i began to ask my parents, i began to look around me, i began to research and i found that there was all this, i don't know if this is a word, dimensionality to the story that's inside of me, that's all around me and has always been around me. so it's only natural that when i would pursue a story, just sit down and begin to write, one, it was natural that the characters would normally be japanese american and/or asian american and it would be natural that those events that happened that were seminal, this is one of the core seminal events of a community that shapes everything from that

point on. generation after generation. they continued to sort of float up and become part of my story lines. even when sometimes i tried to not go in that direction, it would come up. and what i've even found is as i write characters now, for example in the play after the war, when i write characters that are not japanese american, that are african american, that are anglo american, as in this particular play, i have to be really really conscious of the fact that these characters, how they speak and the directness of their speech, in how aggressive or non-aggressive they are in certain situations, that i am seeing the world through that character's eyes and not my normal japanese american sort of perspective. because my point of view, i have come to know, is a specific one, how my characters and how i talk to the world and interact with the world is very different than how other people's might. so over the years i have

learned how to both be aware of my own particular voice and how i have to also look beyond it if i want to write about other characters who are not part of a linage that has come from the internment camp experience. so in a long way of telling and responding to the question, it's simply there inside of me. just like part of your history. so it's easy for me to write about it. the key is that if i write about it now, both in terms of me as an artist and just for the interest of the audience, i have to find a new way to explore it. i have to find some way that affords new information to the people and a new approach for me so it doesn't get boring. i've written about this stuff for 30 years and if you are an artist, the point is not to keep -- for me, anyway -- to keep saying the same thing. the idea is to keep challenging

yourself so you are always on sort of the edge of your own knowledge, you are always on the edge of your art form so that when you write and you write about a theme such as the internment camps and you have written about it before, you are always sort of exploring new ways to attack it, to approach it, so it keeps its relevancy to today and that it stays fresh and alive for the audience and for myself. so in after the war it deals with post internment but critical -- this is sort of where the origins of the story come from and you were asking about that earlier, chloe. one of the things i've been interested in in the last 10 years of my writing is how different communities interact with other communities, when they rub up against each other, just because that's so much of what being an american is this day and a